Like many single parents living in the shire, I have recently been given notice on my rental and forced back into the overpriced rental market. With two school-aged children in my care, a boy aged 17 and a girl aged 10, I require an affordable three bedroom home in the vicinity of their schools. The problem is that the rents on three-bedroom homes in this area are absurdly overpriced and with asking prices between the $400 and $500 mark for anything half decent it is virtually impossible to live alone with my children.
If I were to share with someone else, we could get a mansion in the hills, equipped with swimming pool and lawn maintenance for approximately $600 per week ($300 each).
However, not all of us want to share with strangers and it isn’t fair or right that we are forced to do so.
With so many single parents living in the shire, it is about time that something was done to address the issue of affordable housing.
At one end of the spectrum you have affordable luxury housing for two people paying the rental but at the other end it is impossible to get a rental property under $400 that is not damp, dark and disgusting.
Through no fault of our own, we are about to be made homeless because there just isn’t anything affordable (under $350 pw) and this will no doubt have devastating repercussions on my children, especially my son who is doing the HSC.
It is the lower-end housing prices that need to be adjusted so that single parents like myself can afford to live in a half-decent home and not spend 80 per cent of our incomes on overpriced rent.
Misha Sim, Clunes
